I recently made comments regarding fighter pay. The intent of these statements was to highlight that professional fighters incur significant expense associated with their preparations to fight and that fighter compensation is still not on par with other major sports. While I am fortunate to have various revenue streams associated with my business interests, most fighters do not have that luxury. When you spend training camps with great guys with amazing talents and you see them barely making ends meet, while simultaneously seeing athletes in other sports with far less character and a far smaller work ethic making exponentially more, you can get frustrated.Unfortunately, I made statements that alluded to how the UFC in particular pays its athletes. This was particularly offensive as Zuffa has taken better care of me than any other organization, even giving me a bonus for being amusing on Twitter. My choice of words was poor, not properly informed, and did not match my intent. Additionally, my comments were taken out of context. I can tell you that I have been fighting longer than most people and I remember all too well the days when there was no regulation or standard for an MMA promotion. I fought many times in Mexico where the rules were negligible, there were no physicals, and being paid was a luxury we didn’t expect. Our sport was shunned and was considered “human cockfighting”. Today, we are on Fox. We have doctors and insurance. We make more money than the average American. And we get these things by playing a sport we love. The only reason this is possible is because of Zuffa. They have legitimized the sport and taken better care of the athletes than any other organization, and the trend is only improving, with athletes making three times what they made on average five years ago. My comments were hurtful and inappropriate. I accept full responsibility for the statements and apologize to the UFC, Dana White, Lorenzo Fertita, & Joe Silva as well as anyone I might have offended with my comments. Fighting for the UFC is an honor and a privilege. I look forward to putting this situation behind me and focusing on my upcoming fight with Roger Gracie.

Wow, props to Tim Kennedy for this stand up post. I think its fair to keep the fighter pay an open discussion. attacking your employer is not the best way to go about it though. It was good to hear WHY Tim said the things that he did

"The intent of these statements was to highlight that professional fighters incur significant expense associated with their preparations to fight and that fighter compensation is still not on par with other major sports. "

As a garbage man who grosses less in a year than he does in a fight I'm glad to see him take full ownership of his comments and make a legitimate apology. When a person apologizes it should be like that, props.

Now that's an awesome and well thought out post. Props to Kennedy for that. I didnt care too much for his initial way of going about talking about fighter pay and thought his examples were horrible but I'm glad to see that he can recognize how different things are right now and hopefully see that things will (hopefully again) get better as time goes on. Good move by him.

Haadogei - what. you all think that's a good apology? Sounds like he's still whining to me.

He cleared up what his main intention was (which to me seems to be the amount required to train at this level compared to what the low to mid range fighters make) of his first post and also highlighted many positives that Zuffa and the UFC have brought to the sport. He obviously is still going to have his opinion on fighter pay but IMO, in this post he put it in a much more appropriate way.

I'll bet you any amount of money someone at Zuffa called his manager and said we are faxing you your release right now and his manager called Tim and told him you best kiss some ass and do it fast cause WSOF and Bellator wont be paying you near that much.

Fitch didnt even get that much from WSOF, 30/30 and he is 10x the proven fighter Kennedy is.

I'll bet anything they said you dont like how we pay you, go see how these other orgs treat you.

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